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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thepastorsheart">Facebook</a> then on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ThePastorsHeart">YouTube</a> and on our <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> website and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
The missing 70% - Coz Crosscombe, Andrew Beddo and Simon Gillham
Reaching the 70% of the population who are significantly underrepresented in our churches.
We’re talking about everyday Australians — people who’ve gone straight into the workforce rather than university. That includes hairdressers, plumbers, builders, business owners, factory workers, truck drivers, IT staff, and media creatives — as well as many in marginalised communities.
Within this group, there’s huge diversity:
- Some are winners — financially successful builders and entrepreneurs.
- Others are respectables — valuing hard work, morals, and family.
- Some are survivors — juggling multiple jobs and doing it tough.
- And there are those living in hard places — facing struggles with welfare, addiction, and family stress.
Yet while this group represents the majority of Australians, they make up only a small minority in our churches. Why is that? And how can we do better?
- Andrew Beddo — principal trainer at the Vocational Bible College, equipping gospel workers for everyday Australians.
- Coz Crosscombe — director of The Well Training Program at Mount Druitt, focused on training leaders from marginalised communities.
- Simon Gillham — vice principal at Moore Theological College, working on cross-cultural and literacy challenges in ministry.
We discuss why this group is missing from many of our congregations, the cultural and learning barriers they face, and how we can shape ministry, training, and preaching to better reach them with the good news of Jesus.
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reaching those who go straight into the workforce without tertiary education. It is the pastor's heart, it's dominic steel, and our guest is simon gillam, andrew beddow and coz croscombe. They are significantly underrepresented in evangelical churches. Some of them well, they're winners. They're financially successful, they're builders and business owners. Some of them well, they're winners, they're financially successful, they're builders and business owners. Some of them, they're respectables. They value moral, uprightness, speech and manners. Some of them are the survivors multiple jobs but doing it tough. And some are hard living social welfare struggles, addiction and family stress. We are talking about the hairdressers and the plumbers, or some very wealthy business leaders and entrepreneurs. Others with no formal qualifications but have learned their skills on the job truck drivers, factory workers and some who are working in media, it and the arts. But we are also talking the marginalised. And how do we reach that? How do we effectively reach that wide, diverse, non-tertiary educated group?
Speaker 1:We are joined today by an expert panel Andrew Betto trains people for ministry and service through the Vocational Bible College. Cos Crosscombe he leads the Well Training Program, looking to train in ministry people who are marginalized. And Simon Gillum, vice Principal of Sydney's Moore Theological College, who's been working on cross-cultural and literacy issues as we develop ministry models to the less literate. I want to dig in in a moment on the different perspectives that each of them have, but before we do that, our common pastor's heart, andrew Betto, can we start with you? We were at the Gospel Coalition mini-summit just a few weeks ago talking about reaching Australia and doubling the number of evangelicals over 20 years, and you talked about your heart for this percentage of the Australian population who don't have a tertiary education, who are significantly underrepresented in our churches.
Speaker 2:In Australia and in Sydney we're very blessed. We have many churches, many Christian conferences, but many people in the world don't have that access, and so I grew up thinking well, maybe I could serve God amongst the unreached people in another country. But as I grew up and became a young man, god showed me this large group of people in our society who do go straight into the workforce from school but aren't well represented in the churches that I was a part of. And so God then has directed that heart for unreached people to a group in Australia. It was the last place I thought I'd serve God, because of the wealth of churches and Bible colleges we have here already Now.
Speaker 1:Cos, as I was researching for this discussion and ringing each of you guys up, I realised actually you're talking about slightly different groups. You use the term marginalised, although Andrew's thinking about a broader group. I think Is that right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is. Yeah, we talk about a small subsection of that, mostly those who've been either pushed outside of the mainstream society or haven't quite fit in, and so some of that is economic marginalization, some is ethnic marginalization or language marginalization. Yeah, so those who tend not to fit in, or do so well, in our normal society structures.
Speaker 1:And I mean, what's the terminology we should use?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there's so many different things. I mean, you know, I spent a lot of time in the US where urban was kind of a nice word for that, which doesn't work so well in other parts of the world. We were playing the other day with saying you know, this is kind of majority world, what most of the world looks like, which is a little bit different than often. The dominant culture in Sydney or other parts of the Western world looks like Fringe groups, vulnerable people, there's all kinds of ones. We tend not to use the word like socially disadvantaged, because actually the social systems are quite extensive and we don't see that as being a disadvantage based upon your economics. But yeah, terms are hard, so you kind of define it each time you get into the room.
Speaker 1:Marginalized. Almost sounds like a put-down. Do you know?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think it depends on the way right we look at what society has done to that. So, rather than saying that you've done something that's marginalized yourself, we're saying that the society, the structures of society don't suit the way you learn or the way you work or the way that you function. So it's more that what society has done to the person. But I wouldn't call anybody marginalized. I mean, for me it's just my friends and my neighbors. But, yeah, always looking for a term that kind of describes it.
Speaker 1:Andrew, you've used the term everyday, which leaves some of us feeling, oh, am I not an everyday guy?
Speaker 2:Do you know? And so how do you wrestle with that? Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've used lots of terms. We started with the blue collar people, but then people thought, well, I'm not blue collar because I'm not a tradie. And yet there are so many people who we were concerned and interested to help and support, who do go straight into the workforce from school but aren't tradespeople. So, because it's 70% of the working population don't have a university degree, have gone straight into the workforce from school. They're the I suppose, they're the majority, they're, I suppose, the norm, because they are the majority and it's not a term that's negative or derogatory to say that you're everyday. Most people would be content to say, yeah, I'm happy to be an ordinary, everyday person, and so that's. But it's yeah, it's not always helpful either.
Speaker 1:How do you think about these things, Simon? Yeah?
Speaker 4:Well, I guess, in the terms that we've talked about, I'm an everyday person. I left school to be a labourer. I went to more college, having never been to university.
Speaker 1:I dropped out of university and became a disc jockey.
Speaker 4:There you go.
Speaker 4:I didn't make it in the front door and so most of the friends that I grew up with, and so the stats where I went to school, there was way less than 20% of people heading to university, so that's a demographic I'm very comfortable with, and yet I spend most of my life now, particularly in the Anglican world, dealing almost exclusively with people who've been through university, so I feel that disjunction pretty close to my heart.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think for me, I've become increasingly convinced that one of the issues is the way that we think about word-based ministry and literacy, and I love the fact that we are always centered around word-based ministry. It's so important, always centered around word-based ministry, it's so important. But it's so easy for us to think word-based ministry and immediately equate that with literacy. And the thing that I've become increasingly convinced of is that that's not actually how the Bible talks about word-based ministry and it's not how most Christians throughout most of the world for most of history, have thought about word-based ministry, and it's not how most Christians throughout most of the world for most of history, have thought about word-based ministry.
Speaker 1:When you've got that one Bible in the center of the village in the church and one person who can read it.
Speaker 4:Absolutely, and so we're in a rut, which we're in because of privilege. We're in because we can afford Bibles and because education's been so high. But I think it's allowed us to become comfortable with a model of ministry that excludes people, and I know I do it myself. So, even coming from that background, I know when I preach I drop into models of ministry that exclude huge parts of the population. So what are you trying to do about it that exclude huge parts of the population? So what are you trying to do about it? Well, I'll tell you how I do it. And then this is how I do it.
Speaker 4:I stand up and I say how great it is to be here. Open up your Bibles to this page. Can you see in verse 7 what it says there? Now, everyone who can read can, and everyone who can't read knows they don't belong, and I do that reflexively so often. So instead, what I'm trying to do is say listen to what God is telling us through his word, listen to this, read it out. Did you catch that as it came? Or something like that. It's just changing my expectations that people are actually listening to the word of God as I preach. They're not necessarily reading it Great if they can, but I don't want to exclude those who can't.
Speaker 1:Cos. How do you approach this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean the first thing on the stats is right. The exciting part the Sydney Anglicans do an exceptional job at reaching the highly educated. There's not many in the world can do it that well and, you know, just running into people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it was crazy. Last Sunday I walked into our church in the morning and I looked at the sound desk. We had three people on the sound desk one on sound, one on sound, one on the slides and one on the live stream and all of them had PhDs. We are in a particular part of Sydney, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, and I think that's a common right. But I've lived since I was, yeah, early teenagers in very poor communities or rural or government housing, and what really struck me was that in those communities, the people that I lived around were the ones running the churches. And then, coming and seeing this super highly educated group giving up professions to go into churches right on the one side, it's fantastic. Just the other group was missing from that conversation and so for me it's not saying hey, you know, let's get rid of this other part. That's working great, it's just trying to bring some balance. So every time I walk out my house, I see people that are incredible at leading things, yet I never see them leading in the churches when I go to conferences, they've got leadership gifts.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'll use one example, right? So we're in Penrith Territory, I'm not?
Speaker 1:a.
Speaker 3:Panthers fan. But we're in Penrith territory and you've got world-class leaders coming up through those communities who are leading teams state level, national level, international level. They're incredible leaders. Somehow the football coaches can see, identify and develop leadership out of those communities. We see it in other ways, sometimes in unhealthy ways, whether it's gang activity or criminal activity. But just even in the local shop you see leadership. Or the local factory you see leadership. Yeah, it's all through the communities. Mums running PTAs, running PNC stuff yeah, there's leadership everywhere around there. We just don't really have many pathways to allow that leadership to shine.
Speaker 4:So recognizing leaders like who we're looking for starts to narrow down the pool that we're actually using, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It is. It is. I mean, you know, it's been fantastic. We set out to try and find five leaders that we could train. That was kind of our mandate and we're up to 30 now and if you just meet them they're phenomenal. I mean, they're great. A guy down in Shell Harbour who within two months has got 18, 20 guys coming out to read the Bible with him. He's a leader of men and you see the guys that he's leading they're not the normal ones that you're seeing in our church pews. You know bodybuilders, weightlifters, guys in factories that are coming out. You know Andrew sees this all the time and it's just once you give opportunity you start to see people shine.
Speaker 1:But you've got to give opportunity in the first place, I think. What's the literacy issue that you're finding? I mean, we just heard it from Simon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we find a few different things, so we find the. So I'm an experiential learner.
Speaker 1:It took me until I was in my mid-30s before someone taught me that. Gave you that label.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what's it mean? Yeah, so it means that I learn by experience. I don't learn really well from books. I love to read stories. I read every night stories, but I've got a whole library full of texts that I really struggle to ever read. But I can go and process information. And so someone put me in a program for my master's. I didn't.
Speaker 3:I got a master's and I got a doctorate, I think from a good place, because I was able to use experiential learning, go to the street and talk to people, go and interview people. I mean, this is experiential learning doing here and that was so much fun, better for my learning style than trying to read a book. And so we find that, you know, we find indigenous students who learn through artwork or music. Their depth of knowledge is exceptional. Their ability to teach is amazing. But it's not out of a book, it's by doing a painting or you know. I remember Michael Ducker taking me for a walk around his little farm and pointing out creation and telling me through the biblical stories, by showing me the trees and the pathways.
Speaker 1:He's clearly a visual thinker.
Speaker 3:He is absolutely, and so you take those techniques and you start to give people the opportunity to use that. It's quite amazing how much they begin to shine.
Speaker 4:There are even things we can do in the higher education sector to better equip people for ministry, I think, but also better recognise their different models of learning. So the partnership that we've got with the Well part of it's.
Speaker 1:COS's group. Cos's group? Yeah, the Well.
Speaker 4:A part of their program is something that is a more college product. All of the assessments are oral assessments and there's an oral exam. They're not written, and so people will go and do a ministry task preach a sermon, lead a group, whatever the task is and then, on the back of that, have a conversation where you get a very good idea about whether the students actually learnt the things, but their capacity to write an essay is irrelevant to that. And we're running the same thing up in Armidale Diocese with early retirees or people heading towards early retirement who haven't been in schools for ages but are great learners and are terrific leaders and are going to actually do most of their ministry orally anyway. And so seeing what they do in ministry and having a conversation with them is a better mode of assessment than can they write an essay.
Speaker 1:Even on precision.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you can get to a lot more precision if I can just ask you one more question about what you meant there than by you submitting an essay and me having to guess. Oh, I wonder what that line meant. So it actually does allow for greater precision. We've known this for centuries, right? So the highest kind of degree that you can do anywhere as a PhD In the most esteemed institutions. What's the final assessment for the PhD?
Speaker 1:An oral exam.
Speaker 4:So we're not saying we want a lower standard, we want a less rigorous way of doing it. It's a different way of doing it and we've actually recognized the rigor of this for centuries. So we're using a lot more oral exams at Moore College, partly for that reason, so the person coming out of vocational Bible training or coming out of the well, where are they going?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for us we're looking for ministry leaders. So we have three that are pastoring congregations at the moment out of our first 10 grads. We have a couple other church planters. We've got a few others who've launched new work, um, so they're going into the communities that fit them. You know we've got palo, who's uh church planting amongst filipinos. Palo is just fantastic and just remember he went through a more formal training program for one year and he left and he said, look, because I'm no good at ministry, because I'm always getting the lowest grade in class, and we looked and assessed and talked to others and said, actually you're quite exceptional at ministry, just the system hasn't worked for you. So he blitzes it through the program, comes out and church plans.
Speaker 2:We recognize that a lot of the people who go straight into the workforce from school don't actually have an opportunity for the discipleship and training that often happens on a university campus through AFES. And so we, at our first level training, we're just wanting to train people to be effective disciple makers where they're confident to share their faith with others, confident to share the Bible and help others grow mature.
Speaker 1:What's the minimum literacy level required for a senior pastor?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I think, if we think biblically, leaders have to be readers, they have to engage with the Word of God.
Speaker 1:I've had this line in my head. I don't know where I've got it from, but just wherever the Word of God goes, literacy levels will increase. And so because if I want to be a person of the book, I'm going to be wanting to follow after the God who speaks. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:I think that's true. So historically that's demonstrably true. We often go the next step and say and so does university education and that particular way of being literate which is going beyond increasing basic literacy so that everyone can read the word. So the idea of reading the word is a much newer concept. So, leaders reading the word, you see, the only people Jesus criticizes for not reading the word are the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus criticizes for not reading the word are the scribes and Pharisees. The only people in the New Testament who are expected to read the word. Timothy is to read the word publicly and the church is meant to gather around. So certainly, literacy.
Speaker 4:I think it makes sense that when people get a taste for the word of God they'd love to be able to read it for themselves. But it's not a bar for every Christian person. I think it is a requirement of a leader. You can't rightly handle the Word of God if you're not able to engage with it. You can certainly hear it and repeat it. I mean there'd be many evangelists who are not literate. I think that's absolutely true. So whatever you make of the senior pastor idea, that demography, if you're talking about an elder teaching elder biblically, it's somebody who's handling the word of God, I think.
Speaker 1:Do you agree disagree?
Speaker 3:We've had this discussion before. Yeah, I probably have a little broader take on it. I mean, I think you know, in the book of Acts we've got the comments about you know when Peter and John are speaking and people say you know who are these uneducated people? So whether they're literate or not, I'm not quite so sure that you have to be literate to be a minister in a church. But I think for me the association, and I think a lot of it, came around when the Reformation happened in the same kind of time period as the Enlightenment and we ended up putting education, formal education, as a high bar of society.
Speaker 3:And I don't think it was in the early church at all. And even Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians, talks about right. Remember, not many of you were enlisted the things that he's addressing. The church, I mean the early church, was mostly the poor, the marginalized, the outcasts, those who didn't fit into society following the savior who didn't fit into society. Right, even his execution was one for the poor. You know he wasn't given the rights of execution of the wealthy or even the middle class at that time. So I'm not quite convinced that the literacy levels have to be a certain way. I just think the whole association with higher education and gospel ministry is a fault. I don't think it's got any biblical basis to put those two things together. I think competency in ministry isn't measured by education level, nor is competency in society measured by education level.
Speaker 1:I'll just sit back and listen to Andrew Gillum respond.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think in the New Testament what you do get is churches are expected to sit around and hear the word read. Somebody there is reading it out. The letters are written and the word of God was committed to writing for good reason, so there were oral traditions. But even back in the Old Testament, when Moses writes the law, you have this great change in the way that God is now communicating with his people, so that when Joshua speaks you see, in Deuteronomy 34, the people heard what Joshua said and obeyed what God had commanded Moses. And so there's a referring back to the written word, which is why the priests and the kings, the Levites, the elders, had to read the word for Israel.
Speaker 4:I think we see that in the New Testament communities as well. So I thoroughly agree with what Koz is saying about the enlightenment and the education model. But literacy is not the same as that. So somebody being able to read the word, so that we know that what that teacher is saying is actually coming from the Word, we can hear it for ourselves. That doesn't mean everybody's literate, but somebody is handling the Word and in that sense, the handling of the Word, I think, is the written Word that's being given to us. I think that's the difference. It's not because it's quite right. What happened at the Enlightenment was that we then put higher education on the same level as literacy, and I don't think it would be true to say that the early church or the medieval church thought of that as literacy.
Speaker 1:How do you think about it in terms of not so much the teaching exercise but the organisational exercise of the church? And I mean, I just think about the compliance levels and all those kind of things that I, just as a senior leader, have to be across, and I can't see a way out of it. Yeah, I hate it but I can't see a way out of it. It depends what the church is right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that question because that's a really common one, right? And so we've got this massive skewing in churches that got elders or wardens. We've got this massive skewing. I think about it. Right. I was talking to a lawyer this morning about a house sale. He's amazing at his job. He doesn't tell me what to do. His job is to facilitate what I've asked him to do. An accountant's job is to help me but not to be in charge of me. And what we've done is we've kind of skewed that and said those with organizational skills or certain skills are the ones who are in charge, not those who are best equipped to lead. And I've got a great example for us. I sit on the board of a health clinic based in Philadelphia, an amazing Christian health clinic. Our budget's about $50 million a year.
Speaker 1:Our board is made up primarily You're on the board from Mount.
Speaker 3:Druitt. I'm on the board from Mount Druitt. Yeah, they're very kind to let me stay there. Our board is made up of those who come from the poorest section of the poorest city in the United States, so people who are living in extreme poverty. How can a board be made up of very poor people? Because they're really really good at understanding the community and what it takes. Then what we do is we hire exceptional people to do the other things. You hire exceptional doctors and exceptional managers, but it's the board who dictates the direction, and I think what we've ended up with in some churches is we've ended up with really good managers but not necessarily really good gospel leaders, and that's a real difference. So I can bring somebody in to be my architect, I can bring somebody in to be my engineer or my accountant or my lawyer, and their job is to take direction from me. That's different than being the person who's telling me what to do, and I think we've skewed that.
Speaker 3:Our communities are full of people who know what to do. If you came to our community and wanted to navigate it, you would ask local people. You'd be crazy to ask the outside person to come and tell you how to navigate Mount Druitt, the same in Philly. I don't think you survive very long in the communities I lived in, but local people know how to navigate those communities. There's a great book written called Code of the Street and talks about the different systems that work in different places. Systems that work in this area we're in now, like in Annandale, don't work in Mount Druitt. They're very different systems and so we've skewed it again to there. So just because somebody's been marginalized or poor doesn't mean that they don't have leadership, don't have intelligence, can't manage things.
Speaker 4:They can just hire people to do those other roles can't manage things, they can just hire people to do those other roles. I think another way of responding to the question, too, is if the model of church that we have now has become so complex that only people with all of that suite of extraordinary gifts could possibly lead it. And maybe it's not the people who are the problem, it's the model.
Speaker 4:So rethinking the model is really important and I think again, we get ourselves into a bit of a rut and we think there's no other possible way of doing this, but some of the things that you see people who are coming through these other pathways can teach us is well, okay, we've got a church of 30 Filipinos who weren't meeting before and weren't going to go to another church, and they're here there. Why would we turn that church into another one of the churches, like us, that's?
Speaker 1:got all these problems that they weren't going to go to, that they weren't going to go to in the first place. Let's learn from how they're doing stuff and yet some things have to happen. I mean there needs to be safe ministry stuff and there needs to be all these different components.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, and the accounting and all of those things. Well, yeah, just.
Speaker 1:I don't know how. I mean. How do you do it if you're in charge and you don't understand a spreadsheet?
Speaker 3:I think there's lots of people who can be leaders of things without understanding a spreadsheet. I mean, you know, I've seen some great-.
Speaker 1:I'm not talking about persuading people setting vision, that kind of thing. I'm just talking about making risk decisions. You know, if I yeah, look.
Speaker 3:I think we see some great modelling in the UK at the moment where you've got a church that would fit more as a middle-class church working with a poorer church. The middle-class church may have an administration system, a safe ministry system. They handle all the compliance work, they handle all the accounting and let the minister at the other church do what he really wants to do, which is do ministry to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? In the New Testament, in the book of Acts, we find this very problem coming up for the apostles and they're like they're being taken away from word ministry because of all of the administration. And so what did they do? They found a bunch of godly men and women who could do that administration so that they could be freed up to do the ministry of the word.
Speaker 4:One of the models we've used locally, for that is actually the thing that sits underneath a lot of the church's causes. Talking about the evangelism and new churches as an administrative organisation that does look after the safe ministry, the finance, the payroll, those kinds of things, enables people who are able to do great ministry but, frankly, would not be able to be the rector of a parish in the Sydney Anglican system, would not be able to take that role that actually does take on all the responsibility you're describing. It's interesting. Even as I hear you describe it. I can kind of see the weight coming down on your shoulders.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just think there have been. There's all sorts of things that I've done in the senior minister role which are about pastoring the word of God and prayer, but we built a building at one point and a couple of years ago we bought another house and you know there have been. There.
Speaker 1:Isn't just the leading the people to make that decision, to make that decision, there's actually going and having the fight with the council and worrying about whether or not the risk that we're taking is too big for us, or can we do it and then, when it turns out to be too big, managing that. I mean, there's a whole lot of things in leadership there that don't directly do you know the other day. I was talking to my wife's boss. We were talking about his job running a medical practice with 11 doctors and I thought, oh, there are all these similarities between your job and my job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, he's dealing with patients and vaccines and things like that, but there are some things that are quite similar.
Speaker 4:Yeah, oh, absolutely, and the employment issues are the ones that keep me up at night.
Speaker 4:But I think when we ask these questions, it's worth saying does it need to be like that? Because if it does, we are excluding a whole lot of people from potentially leading. We are excluding a whole lot of people from potentially leading. So if it doesn't need to be like that, if we can set up a structure that better supports and enables those decisions to be made by qualified people who can service really well and that enables a lot of other people to do word-based ministry, gee, that'd be worth exploring, wouldn't it? So, yeah, I think, whatever the solution we come to, if we can do that, we will see a lot more people in ministry and people from a broader range of society. And if we see people leading society who are not from the same kind of narrow band, they're much more likely to serve well in communities that are dominated by that kind of population.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm for reducing the load on the senior minister. Okay, thank you so much for coming in. It's been super helpful. Andrew Betto has been our guest. He trains people for ministry and service through vocational Bible college. Cos Crosscombe leads the Well Training Program and looks to train people in ministry to the marginalized. And Simon Gillum, vice principal of Sydney's Moore Theological College, working on cross-cultural and literacy issues. As we develop these ministries, my name's Dominic Steele. This has been the Pastor's Heart and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
